


A Final Test

by Among (Seethedawn)



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Friendship/Love, Gen, M/M, Trust, ineffable
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-09 13:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19477039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seethedawn/pseuds/Among
Summary: A final test of friendship, the ultimate show of trust.





	A Final Test

**Author's Note:**

> Good Omens is everything. Haven't read the book, but I certainly will now. 
> 
> So maybe this is an issue that wouldn't come up in the book, but I don't really buy that Crowley would be able to go to Heaven, even dressed up like Aziraphale, and get away with it. They would have to sense it. Anyway, I started writing this as an alternative.

Heaven is the original bureaucracy. A system, devised by eternal beings, bound to follow the (often implied, self-contradicting, or potentially even sarcastic) edicts of the ineffable Almighty - the handbook could hardly be expected to fit on 10 sheets of A-4, even double sided and single spaced, now could it. 

Though ethereal by nature, the bureaucracy of Heaven shares the same basic traits of all bureaucracies - namely speed and efficiency, or, rather, a distinct lack thereof. 

Say you are an office worker. You need a new set of sticky notes for your desk? Submit a requisition form, wait for approval, if approved, resume waiting. In the meantime, you are free to cut scrap paper into quarters and use tape to simulate the sticky note’s basic functional properties. 

In Heaven, the same principle applies: Say you are the Archangel Gabriel. The Apocalypse, The Great Plan, Armageddon, has been thwarted, and you need to have the angel responsible burned in hellfire. You submit a requisition form (hellfire being rather harder to acquire in Heaven than sticky notes in an earthly office building - especially given that the earth is not, irritatingly enough, currently the site of the final battle between Heaven and Hell, Angels and Demons, Good and Evil) and now you wait. 

On Earth, Aziraphale and his demonic associate glutton themselves on fine wines, tender meats, and rich desserts. They attend concerts and admire the earth’s natural wonders. They wait. 

Slowly, the idea bubbles up the divine chain of command, that Aziraphale does not appear to have Fallen. 

This complicates matters for Gabriel. 

Angels who disobey God’s will, Fall. It’s a well enough known precept, commonly accepted to be true. 

Therefore, if Aziraphale has not Fallen, then it follows that he has not disobeyed God’s will? 

This makes Gabriel and his subordinates nervous. 

If Aziraphale has not disobeyed God’s will, and the actions Aziraphale has taken have put him in direct conflict with Gabriel, his subordinates, and the forces of Heaven more generally, then… Well. Perhaps hellfire is not the best approach, as much as Gabriel itches for it. 

Metatron brings the issue up with the Almighty, who apparently cannot be arsed to weigh in usefully. Metatron reports back that, “Raindrops upon the mountain cannot describe the depth of the oceans.”

Blinking is a wasted effort for Angels upon earth, and in Heaven it is doubly so. 

Gabriel blinks twice. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” 

Metatron gives a helpless little shrug.

The angels, as is their wont, decide, in the absence of clear direction, to do nothing. 

Hell is a different type of bureaucracy, though a bureaucracy nonetheless. It’s more like when your elderly grandmother has been diagnosed with Stage 4 throat cancer that wasn’t caught earlier because she isn’t able to drive herself to her checkups, and even though you told her you would take her, she doesn’t want to bother you because she knows you have class during the day. So one day she collapses and is rushed to the ER and they do a biopsy and - cancer. 

Since your Grandfather died, she never named anyone to have power of attorney, and she cannot speak around the intubation tube and her hands are too weak to sign the medical release form, so you must go to the courts (missing class all the while). The courts assign a legal representative to your grandmother, but the assigned legal representative has 37 other cases running concurrently and is hardly able to recall your grandmother’s name. All the while, your grandmother is being subjected to radiation therapy that you know she never wanted which is making her weaker and sicker and still dying anyway.

When she finally dies, after three weeks of mounting misery, her assets are leveraged against the accumulated medical debt, and you must use your student loans to cover her basic funeral rites. You can submit paperwork to take your finals a week late, and you do so, but you do not pass enough of them to maintain Satisfactory Academic Progress through your degree and you are placed on academic probation, lose your scholarship, and you owe the money back for the semester that had already been dispersed.

If you wish, you may petition this finding on Monday February 18th, at 9 AM.

That’s the kind of bureaucratic vibe hell has cultivated. 

However, when Beelzebub hears from Michael that Heaven has decided to take no action regarding the Angel Aziraphale, she does three things:

She rolls her eyes so hard she almost pulls a muscle - impressive for an occult being merely occupying the general shape of a human. 

She turns to Hastur and spits “bring me Crowley.”

She does not fill out any forms. 

Heaven may not feel itself able to take it's wrath out upon the Angel Aziraphale, but Beezlebub is more than happy to take out two birds with one stone.


End file.
